


the long road home

by emavee



Series: in the dead of night [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: (spoiler: he gets many), Amnesia, Angst, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Court of Owls, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27666563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emavee/pseuds/emavee
Summary: Seven months after his disappearance, Dick is finally home, now a trained undead assassin missing more than a few of his memories. Recovery might take some time, but they’ll get there. Eventually.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Series: in the dead of night [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948285
Comments: 11
Kudos: 173





	the long road home

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third fic in my Talon Dick series and it’s all about recovery! I recommend reading at least the fic before this one, but you can probably make sense of this without it if you prefer :)

A month. Thirty-one whole days. That’s how long it took Bruce to investigate the Court of Owls and put together a plan to take them down. A month of pain-staking, nearly non-stop research, strategizing and pouring over contingency after contingency into the wee hours of the morning. A month of knowing that Dick was out there somewhere, trapped with  _ them, _ confused and hurting and lost.

It has been the longest month of Bruce’s life. Every day that Dick had continued to wait on him to figure his shit out had felt heavier and heavier, pressing down on him until he was sure that the hunch in his shoulders was no longer imaginary. It was somehow even worse than those first six months where Dick had been resembling a cold case. 

He knows, now, what they did to his kid, how they changed him. Well, at the very least he understands the gist. They call their assassins Talons, train them to be the perfect silent killers. There are rumors of enhanced speed, strength, and dexterity, as well as extremely impressive regenerative capabilities, all of which Bruce can attest to thanks to his brief encounter with Dick. He didn’t think he’d ever be upset about the idea of Dick having a healing factor, but he knows that in this case, in the hands of these enemies, it can’t be a good thing.

There are rumors that Talons can’t die—not really, not for long, not unless you chop their head off. That idea is much harder for him to stomach. He doesn’t want to know how they know that, doesn’t want to imagine his child bloody and still on some marble floor or dirty alleyway, waiting in some sort of limbo for those precious seconds of emptiness just to shudder back to life and keep fighting as if nothing had happened at all. It’s unimaginable. Even after six months of no contact, the ideas of  _ Dick _ and  _ dead _ simply refuse to slot together in his mind. Not Dick. Not ever.

It takes him a month, and he has to call in the rest of the League, as much as he hates them meddling in his city. This is too important, and the Court is bigger and more dangerous than he’d ever imagined. It takes a good chunk of those thirty-one days just to synthesize cold weapons to use against the Talons—their only real weakness that doesn’t involve decapitation. 

Batman splits off about halfway through the mission, sprinting through the sewers and dark labyrinth hallways with half of a map and a desperate need to locate Dick’s whereabouts. He hasn’t seen him yet, fighting alongside the other Talons. He would know, even with the freaky masks; Dick is smaller than all of them, the only real child amongst their ranks. 

He rounds a corner and sweeps into a room filled with coffins. The sight makes him pause. There are so many of them, each labelled with a name:  _ Boone, Newhouse, Turner, Cobb, Carver. Gray Son. _

He lurches towards that final coffin without having to tell his feet to move, crossing the space in just a few hurried steps. He has no idea what exactly he expects to find, but he knows he has to look. His hands shake as he heaves the lid off, surprised when he’s met with a burst of cold air.

“Dick,” he barely breathes.

Dick stares up at him, eyes half-lidded and glazed over. Frost clings to his hair and eyelashes, tear tracks frozen in place on his cheeks. There’s blood splattered on his neck and face, as well as coloring his hands and speckling his arms. Some of it is red, but even more of it is black—Talon blood, more than likely Dick’s own. 

Bruce lifts him gently from the casket, careful not to bump or jostle him. He doesn’t really understand Talon physiology, and he’s not willing to risk Dick’s health by being anything other than gentle. 

Folding carefully to his knees, he positions Dick on his lap so that his head can rest against Bruce’s chest and he can wrap his cape around his shoulders. He expects it to take a few minutes for Dick to stir and regain awareness, but almost immediately Dick lets out a whimper and moves to cling tightly to Bruce’s cape. He’s trembling, eyelids fluttering as he bites down hard enough on his lower lip for black blood to well up. 

He’s so small, cradled easily in Bruce’s arms, and his skin is freezing to the touch. Bruce can feel the cold leaching through his armor. He rubs his hand gently up and down Dick’s arm, trying to help warm him up even a little bit. 

Despite the faint movements and small noises, it’s hard for Bruce to wrap his head around the fact that his son is here in his arms. He looks dead, so pale he’s practically grey, and the dark veins are horrifying to look at. Bruce can’t help it; he loathes the sight of those tear tracks on Dick’s cheeks. He brushes them away, a spark of hope lighting up in his chest when Dick twists slightly to chase after the gentle touch.

“Dick?” Bruce asks, voice soft. He highly doubts the past month has done much to jog Dick’s memory but the name slips out anyway, as if he’s merely trying to rouse him from a nightmare.

It’s enough, though, to cause Dick to startle. He scrambles up and back, pushing off of Bruce’s chest and skidding backwards across the marble floor until his back hits another casket with a soft  _ thunk. _

He stares at Bruce, eyes pried wide open in what Bruce thinks might be panic, but without any movement in his chest, it’s hard to get a read on how he’s feeling. He’s even paler than Bruce remembers, black veins all that more prominent. The moment Bruce so much as twitches, Dick is jumping to his feet, spine ramrod straight with hands fisted at his sides. He watches Bruce half warily, half expectantly, probably awaiting some sort of orders. 

“Dick…” Bruce says, rising slowly to his feet. “Do you know I am?”

Dick frowns, back to biting his lip. Bruce resists the overwhelming urge to tell him to stop. “Owl?” He flinches at his own question, fingers twitching nervously.

Bruce reaches up and pulls down the cowl. “What about now?”

Dick blinks, looks even more confused. “Bruce Wayne?” The raspiness in his voice is even worse now, his throat sounding even more shredded than before, as though he’s been screaming for hours, tearing apart vocal cords that should have regenerated by now. Bruce loathes it more than anything.

“Yes,” Bruce commends, although it’s clear that Dick isn’t really recognizing him so much as remembering the face of his old target. 

Dick’s hands twitch towards his belt, reaching for a golden knife that isn’t there. “The Court of Owls has sentenced you to die.”

Bruce expects him to attack, knife or no knife, but he doesn’t. Almost absently, his empty hand brushes against his cheek, the same one that Bruce had reached out to cradle at the gala a month ago.

“This isn’t you, Dick,” he pleads softly. “You don’t belong here.”

Dick frowns. “Yes I do. I am the Gray Son of Gotham, destined to be the greatest Talon there has ever been or ever will be.” He says it robotically, mechanically, as though he’s heard it a thousand times before.

“No,” Bruce insists. “No, your name is Dick Grayson. Robin. You’re a hero and a good kid.”

He shakes his head. “Not a hero. I’m a killer.” He pauses, as if remembering something. “I’m supposed to kill you.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

It’s meant to be a probing question, to help Dick remember that he’s not a killer, that he doesn’t really want to be a killer. Instead it makes him stiffen in fear, eyes wide and pleading. 

“It’s okay, Dick,” Bruce soothes instantly. He can’t stand this, Dick looking at him with fear in his eyes. “It’s okay that you don’t want to kill. That's fine. You aren’t meant to be here. This isn’t you.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Dick mumbles, but something in his voice sounds like he doesn’t quite believe it.

“I know you don’t remember me, but that’s okay.” Bruce holds his hands up, palms out, trying to be as gentle and placating as possible. “You’re my partner, Robin. My kid. Let me bring you home. I can help you, Dick,  _ I swear. _ I can keep you safe. No one will ever hurt you again.”

Dick shifts nervously. His gaze keeps shifting away, flitting nervously around the room. Clearly it upsets him just to be here. He flinches away when he accidentally bumps into the coffin behind him.

“The Court—”

“The Court is over. They’re done. The Justice League is here, right now, taking them down. You don’t belong to them.”  _ You never did.  _ “It’s over. You get to go home now.”

He can tell that startles Dick, even if the reaction is barely perceptible. It makes sense. The Court of Owls is Dick’s whole world right now, his entire purpose, and as horrible as they treated him, he’s loyal to them. They’re all he knows, and losing that familiarity has got to shake him to his core. 

“Why should I believe you?”

He hesitates, thrown, because he doesn’t know. There’s nothing he can say to Dick to prove that his words are genuine. There’s no reason at all for Dick to trust him.

“You’re my  _ son, _ Dick,” he whispers. His voice cracks, something it hasn’t done in years. He feels close to sobbing, the sound trapped in the back of his throat and hastily swallowed down. “Come home.  _ Please. _ I can help you. You will never have to hurt anyone ever again, and no one will ever hurt  _ you _ either. Please, chum.” He holds out his hand, palm up and open, in a silent invitation. Dick doesn’t trust him, probably won’t really trust him again for a very long time, and the last thing Bruce wants is to start off rebuilding that trust by kidnapping the kid and sticking him in a cell in the Cave. He will, if Dick fights back, if he refuses to come with him—there’s no way he’s leaving him alone any longer—but he really would rather avoid that. 

Dick says nothing, just stands there, silent and unreadable, carefully blank as he studies Bruce. His now-golden eyes flicker slightly in the dim light, and the longer Bruce stares at them, the harder it is to recognize his boy behind the dark, climbing veins. 

He’s most likely not at all prepared for this, but he has to try. He can’t give up on Dick, not now and not ever. That’s his kid, even with blood on his hands and tear stains on his cheeks. Losing him would feel like losing everything, it would feel like dying.

So he waits, hand extended between them, thick silence hanging in the air. It’s agony, since nothing in Dick’s expression gives away his feelings in either direction, and although they can’t stand there like that for longer than a few minutes, it feels like years have passed before Dick finally moves.

It’s none of the quick, sharp movements Bruce had seen from him last time they fought. He moves slow and careful, clearly fighting every instinct that’s been drilled into him via extensive pain and fear, stepping across the chasm between them until finally,  _ finally _ a tiny hand slips into his own and Dick gazes up at him with a ghost of his usual proud determination and Bruce thinks his heart might just burst right out of his chest.

He has no idea why Dick has decided to trust him, but he decides not to question it. It doesn’t matter, not really. All that matters is that Dick is right here and he’s trusting him and that’s all Bruce needs. He resists the urge to tug Dick into his chest, to wrap him up and bury his face in his hair, so desperate to hold him again. 

This is enough. It has to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are super appreciated and help keep me inspired!!


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